Monday, October 29, 2012

THIS MUST go down as the rugby union try of the year, surely. France winger Yoann Huget, grabbed this remarkable score on March 28 in the French Top 14 championship playing for Bayonne away against Montpellier. After a brilliant intercept, he ducked and weaved his way almost the length of the field, kicked ahead, smothered the last defender - who had the ball - regathered and then scored. Magnifique! In spite of this, his team Bayonne lost against Montpellier 26-37. Huget is now playing for French champions Toulouse.

Friday, October 26, 2012

IN HIS recent AUT University inaugural professorial about global media truth, transparency and accountability, David Robie condemned the new so-called e-Martial Law in the Philippines, saying it was a warning for the Pacific.

“The most disturbing trend in the digital age is electronic martial law - a draft new law in the Philippines which criminalises e-libel in an extreme action to protect privacy,” he said.

“The Supreme Court has ruled to temporarily suspend this law. But what happens next? Will it be ruled unconstitutional or will the politicians prevail?

“This Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 is like something out of the Tom Cruise futuristic movie Minority Report. An offender can be imprisoned for up to 12 years without parole and the law is clearly a violation of Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“And truth is not recognised as a defence.

“It would be disastrous if any Pacific country, such as Fiji, wanted to do a copycat law and gag cyberspace.”

Professor Robie highlighted the fact that in the Philippines at least 165 journalists have been murdered since 1986 – 32 of them in the Ampatuan massacre in Mindanao in 2009, the world’s worst single killing of journalists.

Three years later nobody has been convicted for these atrocities.

“The Philippines is a far more dangerous place for the media under democracy than it was under the Marcos dictatorship,” Professor Robie said. “There is a culture of impunity.”

In a joint statement by independent digital and online media, communications and journalism schools and media people in the Philippines, a strong attack has been made on the “cyberspace outrage”.

As outrage against the Cybercrime Prevention Act 2012 continues to snowball and create unprecedented unity and defiance among netizens, the Aquino administration has not backed down in its resolve to implement a clearly draconian measure designed to curtail our most basic civil liberties—the right to freedom of expression, of speech, and of the press.

As alternative media practitioners, filmmakers, bloggers, and artists who maximise the new media to bring to the public information, opinion and analysis, as well as works of art that serve to illuminate social conditions and present ideas for social change, we believe that the government’s repression of the medium is the message. With the Cybercrime Act, the government wants to ensure that no avenue for expression exists that is free from control by the rich and powerful elite.

The existing law on libel has long been used by powerful public figures mostly to harass and prosecute journalists for doing their job. Instead of decriminalising libel as urged by international human rights and media institutions, the government has even increased penalties. Worse, it now considers each and every citizen who uses Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as potential criminals.

With the rise of new media, ordinary citizens have been given the extraordinary power to reach large audiences, a power that has previously been the monopoly of the government and corporate media. The new media has been the recourse of citizens who see, report, and interpret social realities that traditional institutions ignore, hide or obliterate.

Citizens have long been marginalised from discourse on national issues through the agenda-setting powers of the government and corporate media. Through the new media, citizens have the opportunity to counter this marginalisation—to give voice to the poor and oppressed, to gain an audience without the need for huge capitalization, to criticise freely and creatively.

We believe that the Cybercrime Law is primarily a tool that exploits the rise of the new media and the use of ICT to suppress dissent and spy on citizens. The way the law is being defended by those who crafted it, and especially by the President who signed it, reveals that they enjoy, and will use to their own interest, the immense powers that the Cybercrime Law has given the government, such as the ability to take down websites, undertake surveillance, and seize electronic data.

Abuses that will surely arise from such powers will undermine any gains that this law claims to have against “cybercrimes.” For instance, online child pornography and sex trafficking should be addressed by the strict implementation and strengthening of existing laws to reflect the developments in ICT.

It is still debatable if hacking and cracking, spamming, online piracy, and cyberbullying are indeed crimes or if they can be covered under a single piece of legislation. What is clear is that these “cybercrimes” will not be addressed by a law makes expressing oneself online punishable by a jail term, or one that assumes that authorities can dip their hands into private electronic communication.

In other words, a law that throws us back to the dark ages won’t protect our women and children, nor our personal identities and safety. On the contrary, it makes every citizen using ICT vulnerable to abuse by the biggest band of criminals: a government that is corrupt, loathes criticism (as can be judged by President Aquino’s reaction to the online phenomenon ‘Noynoying’), and uses all of its resources to crush dissent.

Even the US government—the footsteps of which the government only follows—did not confer such broad powers unto itself when it attempted, but failed, to pass its Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act.

However, the Cybercrime Law probably pleases the US government, as it strengthens their existing network of surveillance in the country, and boosts the counter-insurgency programme Oplan Bayanihan. The said law also pleases local and foreign big businesses that operate in utter secrecy in this country, further shielding them from public accountability and oversight while penalising those who use ICT to expose wrongdoing and abuses in the private and public sectors.

For e-martial law only reflects the de facto martial law already in place. Under Oplan Bayanihan, more than 100 citizens have been killed for their advocacies, forever silenced by bullets. More than 350 are imprisoned for their political beliefs. The Cybercrime Law makes it even easier to slap dissidents with trumped-up charges and send them to jail. After all, it now takes so little to be considered a cybercriminal.

Repression and lack of freedom is a daily reality for millions of Filipinos in the militarised countryside, violently demolished urban poor communities, and highly controlled workplaces and schools. Now it has become a daily reality as well for netizens who seek comfort in the freedom, however limited, of the new media.

As poverty, exploitation, and repression worsen, the duty to speak up and express ourselves through new media is more necessary than ever. As we begin to feel the grip of Aquino’s iron fist rule, it becomes more urgent to struggle to break free through actions both online and offline. E-martial law has been declared, and as those who fought the Marcos dictatorship taught us, the only way to end it is to start defying it.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

JAKARTA GLOBE stringer and SuaraPapua.com reporter Oktovianus Pogau was choked and beaten by Indonesian police as he attempted to report on a West Papuan protest.

Indonesian police opened fire on protesters in Manokwari, West Papua, shooting two and wounding three others — including a Jakarta Globe contributor — in the latest crackdown on pro-independence groups in the restive Melanesian province, reported Pacific Scoop.

The independent West PapuaMedia reported four people had been shot. Indonesian police denied the shootings, which were graphically videotaped by Metro TV.

Tuesday morning’s West Papua National Committee-sponsored (KNPB) rally began near the State University of Papua (Unipa) in Manokwari, said human rights activist Markus Haluk.

About 300 protesters attempted to march to nearby Borarsi field when police and the Indonesian Military (TNI) blocked their path.

Pogau was videotaping the scene when he was approached by a plainclothes officer and told to leave, according to the Jakarta Globe. When he refused a second officer attacked him from behind.

'Choked my neck'
“[A] policeman in a uniform came and choked my neck while he threatened me and told me to leave the location,” Pogau said.

“I tried to escape and told him that I’m a journalist… but [another] policeman punched me in the face.”

Pogau was pulled from the scene by fellow journalists. He showed the officers his press credentials before the second attack took place.

It was the second assault on journalists in Indonesia in the past week. On October 16, members of the TNI attacked five journalists reporting on a downed military aircraft in Penkanbaru, Riau.

Riau Pos photographer Didik Herwanto was beaten and choked by an officer with the Indonesian Air Force in a widely spread video.

The attack sparked widespread condemnation in Indonesia. Lt. Col. Robert Simanjuntak later apologised.

Pogau is the second Jakarta Globe contributor to be injured on the job while reporting in Papua. Last year, long-time writer Banjir Ambarita was stabbed in Jayapura after reporting on allegations of sexual abuse of female inmates by officers in a Jayapura police detention centre.

Ambarita survived the attack but said the stabbing left him “deeply traumatised” and wary of reporting on government abuse.

In 2011, two journalists working in Papua were killed, according to the Pacific Media Freedom 2011: A status report by the Pacific Media Centre. Eight were kidnapped and 18 others attacked during the course of their work.

Foreign media are banned from reporting in Papua without a special permit. In 2011, only three foreign media outlets were granted approval.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

The logo for the Macmillan Brown Centrefor Pacific Studies-organised conference.

MILITARISM has always been part of Fijian society and the country needs to find a “corporate” bridge between its civil and military based sectors, believes the man who sparked off the modern day coup culture more than 25 years ago.

Sitiveni Rabuka, then a lieutenant-colonel and third-ranked military commander in the Republic of Fiji military Force (RFMF), led the first two of four coups in 1987. The other coups followed in 2000 and 2006.

Former Fiji coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka speaks at the Democracy in the
Pacific conference at the University of Canterbury on Friday. Photo: David Robie/PMC

Rabuka, later an elected prime minister, was giving his views on “democracy” as keynote speaker on Friday in a Pacific-wide conference hosted by Canterbury University’s Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies.

“Militarism has always been a part of Fiji culture,” he said. “Militarism has always been a way of thinking.”

The military traditionally believed that they were the final guarantors of the security of the Fijian people.

“Unfortunately, I broke the democracy way and I stand accused,” Rabuka said, adding that he hoped for better relations with the military in future.

‘Corporate’ committee
He said what was needed was a “corporate” style special committee consulting between the military and the civilian government after the hoped for return to democracy in 2014.

“This would keep tabs on civil-military relations to prevent them breaking down again.”

But he said he believed that the return to democracy in Fiji rested on a fragile election plan that may not eventuate.

If elections did not go ahead, regime Prime Minister and 2006 coup leader Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama would remain in power.

So far, Bainimarama had made no move to establish a new political party, join an existing party or distance himself from the military.

Talking about traditional tribal rivalries and earlier military traditions leading to United Nations peacekeeping duties and politicisation of the army, Rabuka several times cited the famous Battle of Marathon in 490BC when a smaller Athenian army defeated the Persian invading force.

A runner sped to Athens to break the news, declaring: “We have won!”

‘Forgiveness’ process
He said a truth and conciliation “forgiveness” process involving chiefly protocols of “vakaturaga” of the iTaukei culture would contribute to a lasting resolution of Fiji’s problems.

During a plenary session later in the day, Rabuka admitted that he had initially thought the invitation for him to speak at the democracy conference was "a joke”.

“Fiji has had an army destroyer of democracy and a navy destroyer of democracy [Bainimarama] and now I thought they wanted to hear an army destroyer of democracy.”

In a reply to a question about the state of the press in Fiji, Rabuka replied there was a "selective" freeing up of news media debate: "My submission to the Constitution Commission hasn't been reported, for example."

Conflict resolution
"Topics included alternative governance for conflict resolution in the Solomon Islands; conflicting “democracies” in customary and parliamentary governance in Samoa; Tongan constitutional reform; grassroots or top down approaches in overseas territories development aid?; the role of the military in post-colonial Fiji; and peace journalism in the South Pacific: a media and democracy frame in Timor-Leste and West Papua.

PROFESSOR DAVID ROBIE is director of the Pacific Media Centre in AUT’s School of Communication Studies and editor of the international peer reviewed journal Pacific Journalism Review. He holds a PhD in History/Politics (2004) from the University of the South Pacific, Fiji. He has lived and worked as an international journalist and media educator in seven countries for more than four decades.

In this professorial address, Professor David Robie reflects on the challenges in the context of the political economy of the media and journalism education in the Asia-Pacific region. He also explores emerging disciplines such as deliberative journalism, peace journalism, human rights journalism, and revisits notions of critical development journalism and citizen journalism.

In an issue devoted to the Leveson inquiry into Britain’s News of the World phone hacking scandal and the Finkelstein and Convergence reports on the Australian news industry, the research journal has questioned the “increasingly desperate” search for a business model.

“Is the new model the only answer to the current plight of journalism?” writes edition editor Dr Johan Lidberg from Monash University in Melbourne.

“Are media proprietors paying enough attention to the fact that the business model is built on the public trusting the journalistic practices that sit at the heart of the media brands?”

It is as important to retain public trust in journalism and to rebuild lost trust as the quest to make online journalism pay, Dr Lidberg writes.

“Indeed, without, or with low, public trust in news media, will online journalism ever pay enough to sustain quality journalism?” he asks.

One important tool to retain and rebuild trust in any professional practice is openness and accountability.

Ethical codes
“It is to achieve this that industries construct ethical codes of conduct to complement the existing legal framework.”

Along with the British and Australian media crises, the journal also examines NZ Law Commission proposals for media accountability reforms.

“The NZ media has not yet demonstrated anything like the excesses that have been the focus of the Leveson inquiry,” comments media law analyst Linda Clark.

“Which means the government can afford to sit back and watch what happens in the UK and in Australia. It can allow the broadcasters to experiment with an extra layer of self-regulation.”

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

NEW ZEALAND’S public pension fund has stunned the human rights fraternity monitoring the recent upsurge in West Papua violations by Indonesian security forces in West Papua by pulling out more than $1 million in investment from the US-based copper and gold mining giant Freeport-McMoRan.

The $15.7 billion NZ Superannuation Fund announced it was ending investment in four companies that were violating international ethics standards.

The fund decided to can its Freeport investment in the wake of persistent allegations of human rights offences committed by security forces around the company’s controversial Grasberg mine.

But the Auckland-based Indonesia Human Rights Committee and a young photojournalist affiliated with the Pacific Media Centre can take a bow for their contribution to the change of heart by the super fund.

The IHRC has been an ardent campaigner against the investment while Karen Abplanalp, then a postgraduate student at AUT University, carried out a major investigation of the mine and the New Zealand connection as part of her Asia-Pacific Journalism coursework.

Her article was worked up into the lead investigative article, entitled "Blood Money", in Metro magazine in its December edition. This gave a major public profile to an issue that had previously been “hidden”.

If that wasn’t a big enough setback for the Indonesians in the global credibility stakes over its failed West Papua policies, Papua New Guinean Prime Minister Peter O’Neill declared that he was going on the front foot by applying diplomatic pressure on the Indonesians over the human rights violations against their Melanesian brothers.

This is an extraordinary, but welcome, step for a PNG leader to take – and the first such move by a prime minister since independence in 1975. Here is Karen’s Pacific Scoop report on the investment fund fallout:

New Zealand’s public pension Superfund stand against alleged Indonesian government security forces breaches of human rights is making a mark around the world.

The story has been covered by international media and hit the front page of Indonesian news website the Jakarta Globe, with the headline New Zealand fund pulls Freeport investment, cites Papua rights offences.

It is the first time a government fund has made statements linking Indonesian security forces, corruption and human rights abuses.

The NZ Superfund (NZSF) and its investment in the US-owned mining giant Freeport McMoRan’s Grasberg mine were the subject of a major Metro investigation last December written by me while I was a postgraduate communication studies student at AUT University.

At the time, the fund was adamant that it would not divest from Freeport and that the mining company was meeting the fund’s responsible investment standards.

What has changed then for NZSF since the Metro investigation?

NZSF’s head of responsible investing Anne-Maree O’Connor replied to Pacific Scoop: “We have had more time to continue our engagement with a number of companies on our portfolio and to review the resources we have to commit to engagement, and look through which companies we would likely have success with engagement, which ones we needed to draw a line with that we should not pursue engagement because we did not feel that would could generate enough change given our resources and our holdings in the company."

Human rights breached
The NZSF statement said: “Freeport-McMoRan has been excluded based on breaches of human rights standards by security forces around the Grasberg mine, and concerns over requirements for direct payments to government security forces by the company in at least two countries in which it operates.

“Despite improvements in Freeport-McMoRan’s own human rights policies, breaches of standards by government security forces are beyond the company’s control. This limits the effectiveness of further engagement with the company.”

NZSF has investments with RioTinto, which owns 40 percent of Freeport McMoRan – does this mean that NZSF will divest from Rio Tinto also?

O’Connor said: “Freeport McMoRan is the operator mine and they are the ones who make the payments to (the military) and are responsible on the security issues.”

“… It is a significant stake, 40 percent, but Freeport McMoRan is the company that is operating the mine, and they are the ones that need to make management policy decisions.”

It will be interesting to see if other crown financial institutes follow suit.

The Government Pension Fund and the Earthquake Commission also have investments in Freeport McMoRan.

IHRC thanks fund
The Auckland-based Indonesian Human Rights Committee (IHRC), which has long campaigned against “unethical” investment in the mine, met with the NZSF to thank the fund for its decision to divest from Freeport McMoRan.

IHRC chair Maire Leadbeater said the meeting went “extremely well”.

“We were met by CEO Adrian Orr and by Anne-Maree O’Connor and were shown to a room of about 40 people, all of their staff.”

Leadbeater told the staff they were really pleased about the decision, and told them about the kind of response they were getting from around the world.

Indonesia and Timor-Leste campaigner Josef Benedict from Amnesty International said the agency continued to receive “credible reports” of human rights violations committed by the security forces in the neigbouring provinces of Papua and West Papua.

The reports included allegations of torture and other ill-treatment, unnecessary and excessive use of force and firearms and possible unlawful killings.

“Investigations into reports of police abuses are rare and only a few perpetrators have been brought to justice,” he said.

“Amnesty International is also concerned that international observers, non-governmental organisations and journalists continue to be to be denied unrestricted access to the two provinces.”

Amnesty International believes that the lack of independent and impartial monitoring of human rights in the West Papua region contributes to a “climate of impunity”.

Freeport-McMoRan responds
In a response statement to Pacific Scoop, Freeport-McMoRan made the same assertions that the NZSF had made to the original Metro investigation but were discredited in that report.

“We are disappointed in the New Zealand Superannuation Fund’s decision to exclude Freeport-McMoRan from its portfolio based on claims of breaches of human rights abuses by PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), a Freeport-McMoRan subsidiary,” said Eric Kinneberg, the company’s external communications director.

“As specifically recognised by the fund, PTFI has improved its human rights policies and procedures.”

The statement said Freeport-McMoRan had cooperated with the Indonesian government in its role of maintaining public order, upholding the rule of law, and protecting company personnel and property.

“The police are assigned via a presidential decree to protect the Grasberg mine site, which has been categorised as a national vital asset,” Kinneberg said.

“Where invited by the police, the Indonesian military also may be deployed to provide additional security.”

Karen Abplanalp is an Auckland photographer, writer and contributor to Pacific Scoop.

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